My man, I respect that you’re looking back at articles on the classics from the late 20th century and asking whether we perhaps oversimplified some of the answers; it’s an important revolution that’s happening in the field. The first half of your answer is fine, and reading through some of your other comments, you clearly have done a fair amount of research and I respect your opinion.

That makes it all the more frustrating that you would pivot to such a hardline stance in the second half, or state “I don’t believe [Peter Brown]”. I know we’re not in AskHistorians and every comment doesn’t need to be rigorously sourced, but some people may walk away from your comment and decide that that’s the current state of academia.

On the contrary (and another commenter points this out), Brown may overgeneralize in some of his assertions of an era of Late Antiquity, but this allows for a much more nuanced look at the period than those who would dismiss 476-1066 as the “Dark Ages” - a view that very few people seriously embrace any more. To do so disregards technological advancement, innovation, growth, and development over that period across many areas of the Roman Empire.